8-Month-Old Fatally Shot in Laguna Niguel

An 8-month-old boy died Friday night after being shot in the head at his Laguna Niguel home early in the afternoon in what investigators said appeared to be an accident.

Shantae M. Molina’s infant son, Armani, underwent surgery twice at Children’s Hospital in Mission Viejo, an arm of Children’s Hospital of Orange County. The child died after the second operation, said Lt. Joe Davis of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

“It was just too much of a struggle for an 8-month-old,” Davis said late Friday.

Homicide investigators from the Sheriff’s Department said early in the afternoon that the shooting appeared to be unintentional, but they are investigating it.

They would not reveal any details about how the baby was shot. They took Molina to sheriff’s headquarters in Santa Ana to be questioned. She and other family members were released later, and no charges were filed.

“It’s way too early to tell what happened,” Davis said. He described the weapon as a handgun but released no other details.

Davis said the boy’s 20-year-old mother was “hysterical” when she called 911 just before 1 p.m. to report the shooting. When deputies arrived at the house, in a section of older tract housing near Crown Valley Parkway and Street of the Golden Lantern, Molina was holding her son and sobbing.

“The child was conscious, crying and moving,” Davis said.

Deputies were not sure how many family members were in the house at the time of the shooting, Davis said, but the entire family was home when police arrived. He said that all family members are cooperating with the investigation.

About an hour after an ambulance took the boy to the hospital, detectives escorted Molina to an unmarked police car for the drive to Santa Ana. Wearing a hooded white sweatshirt, she bent low in the back seat to avoid a crush of photographers and reporters.

Molina and her son live with her mother, Olga Molina, and her stepfather, Kenny Welch, both of whom also went to headquarters. A teenage sister remained with neighbors across the street. Shaken and tearful, family members declined to talk to reporters.

The shooting stunned neighbors on the quiet street.

“They’re just fabulous, the nicest family you’d ever meet,” neighbor Rick Snider said. “Armani is a fabulous kid, the happiest baby you’d ever want to meet. He always had a smile, and those big brown eyes. . . . You want to cry inside.”

Neighbor Tammy Adkison said Shantae Molina baby-sat regularly for her 1 1/2-year-old son, Cayden. She said she dropped by the Welch home to visit Shantae Molina at 11 a.m. and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Molina seemed fine, she said.

Molina was taking night classes at Saddleback College, she said, and had just quit a job at a Mervyn’s department store to spend more time with her son.

Vince Rubalcava, another neighbor, said he wasn’t surprised to learn that the family had a gun in the house. “We all own handguns here,” he said.

The neighborhood, developed in the 1970s, is remarkably safe, Snider said. “This doesn’t happen here,” he said. “This is an accident.”

Other neighbors, who gathered to watch the developments Friday, said they were surprised the family would have a loaded gun in the house.

“Everybody watches out for everybody here,” Lisa Germain said. “That’s why this just blows me away. Nothing ever happens here. I would never have a gun in my house now with two kids. No way.”

A loaded handgun in the house also worries Adkison. “I wouldn’t let Shantae baby-sit for me again,” she said. “Is that a question you need to ask [baby-sitters] now, ‘Is there a gun in the house?’ ”

Adkison said she and her husband do have a hunting rifle, but it is locked in a cabinet in the garage.

Armani’s father did not live with the family, she said, though the infant was taken to see his father occasionally. “They were never married. They just didn’t get along,” she said.

Times staff writer Bonnie Harris Hayes and Times correspondent Chris Ceballos contributed to this report.